


Just Past Midnight

by sleepscribbling



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-14
Updated: 2011-09-14
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:56:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,040
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepscribbling/pseuds/sleepscribbling
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jethro’s insomnia just got worse after the shuttle incident, and when he did sleep, his rest was light and troubled… (Coda for "Midnight.")</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Past Midnight

Jethro Cane didn’t want to go to the Sapphire Waterfall anymore.

After the repair ship showed up and fixed up the shuttle – welding on a new cabin, replacing the spent air and micro-petrol – they were allowed, even encouraged, to continue on their way to the Waterfall. Val and Biff Cane had been enthusiastic about it, wanting to “get the whole unpleasant business out of the way.” Jethro flatly refused.

On the return flight in the repair ship, Jethro sat alone. The man who called himself the Doctor also chose to return to the Leisure Palace. Jethro wanted very badly to talk to him, but the other clearly wanted none of it. He answered Jethro’s questions politely enough, but with a dismissive, evasive tone. Then he sat alone and flipped through a stack of Agatha Christie novels, hardly seeming to read them. He sat stiffly, still recovering from the attack of the unknown creature – entity – thing. Jethro had decided to call it the Beast.

So they sat in silence, Jethro staring at the sun shields with his earbuds in, while the repair ship hummed back across Midnight's surface. The scariest thing about it, he thought, was that there was nothing to suggest the Beast had even existed. With the few dents dinged out and the new cabin, there was no trace left of the mysterious incident except in the passengers' minds. Sky and the hostess would have been neatly vaporized, leaving the surface of the planet sparkling and bare as ever.

The day after that little excursion, Jethro told his parents he wanted to return to university early, to leave Midnight at the end of the week.

“But we’ve barely spent any time here – our round-trip passes are for the full month,” Val protested.

He stared at her, and said, “This was supposed to be a vacation. Don’t tell me you can relax like this.” There was a little more argument, but for once his parents gave in and it was settled then. They traded in their tickets for a trip leaving Sunday morning, less than four days after their fateful trip and run-in with the Beast. Jethro’s friend Ven, who had passed up the trip to the Sapphire Waterfall because he was sick, had been puzzled by this, but he listened to his friend’s decision.

Jethro’s insomnia just got worse after the shuttle incident, and when he did sleep, his rest was light and troubled. He heard strange bangs and hisses at night, as if something were alive in his bedroom. There were funny tapping sounds on the walls. He covered his head with the pillow but the noise bled through.

Once, he dreamed about being back on the shuttle. The whole thing rattled and pitched like it had before, then dissolved into nothing, and then they were out in space and he was surrounded by stars but the stars were neatly winking out, and the other passengers were gone and he was alone. Jethro woke with a start and nearly peed himself. He didn’t get back to bed that night.

During the day, Jethro searched for the Doctor, and the mysterious gorgeous redhead woman he had seen meet him at the shuttle platform, her face tight with concern. He couldn’t find them, though. He ended up finding Dee Dee, who reported that the Waterfall was not bloody worth it. She was shaken too, and she had heard the phantom noises at night as well. He asked if they could meet over lunch. They talked for what seemed like ages, until the hypercafé where they had gotten lunch began serving dinner. The xtonic sun shone brighter and brighter, in anticipation of its peak radiance in the middle of the resort station’s artifical night.

They met the next day, and Saturday too, and discussed everything – the Beast (which she had her own name for), their stay on Midnight, their entrapment, their lives in general.

He kissed Dee Dee once, and didn’t really know why he had afterwards. She kissed him back, and they made out for a few minutes. They never spoke about that moment afterwards. Dee Dee wasn’t exactly his type. She talked too much about dry things, the properties of the sun and the Lost Moon of Poosh. And besides, she would be staying behind on Midnight. The encounter with the Beast had just galvanized Professor Hobbes’s desire to study the planet, and he was hoping to return to the Sapphire Waterfall and collect rock samples (as if it were the rocks that were the problem) once shuttles were back up and running.

“I don’t believe it’s really dead,” he said at their last meeting.

Dee Dee nodded solemnly. “Sky is dead, but the Entity wasn’t Sky. And I don’t think it’s gone either. I still feel a chill here, no matter how much the Professor says it’s just my imagination.” She gazed out the thick, lead-infused windows at the dazzling landscape, then turned back and leaned in and said, “I feel like something’s still lurking out there in the darkness, just waiting for us to leave or to turn our backs so it can start stealing voices again. Maybe it doesn’t stop at voices.” Jethro shivered. Dee Dee said, “Good luck.”

They said their goodbyes not long after.

Sunday morning, just as scheduled, the Rosszfarkas Company shuttle began its steady ascent into the air above Midnight. Soon the Cane family would be back at Interstellar Hub Δ17-A, and from there it’d be just three days’ flight home.

In spite of himself, Jethro glanced out the window at the glimmering diamond expanses of the planet, and said, “Damn, it sure is pretty from up here, isn’t it?”

Ven nodded. “Damn, it sure is pretty from up here, isn’t it?”

Jethro blinked in surprise. “Ven, are you – nevermind.”

”Ven, are you – nevermind.”

He stared. There was no way. “No way,” he said, and heard a perfect echo back, in that familiar voice. Ven’s eyes, unfocused, stared blankly into nothingness. Jethro turned pale, and fumbled with his seatbelt. I don’t think it’s gone either. This ship was a hundred times larger than the trans-Midnight shuttle, but all at once he felt completely trapped. The cabin was pressure-controlled and motion-stabilized…

Jethro ran.


End file.
